For Art’s Sake

Brian Eno has had a career far greater than that of a singular artist. The leopard-clad co-founder of the British pop band Roxy Music played synthesizer and heavily contributed to the band's early sound, before becoming the pioneering solo artist who created the genre of ambient music in the mid ‘70s. In the following years, the Suffolk-born musician and composer redefined the sonic landscape of popular music as the producer of some of the most influential pop albums of the ‘80s and ‘90s, including U2, The Talking Heads, and David Bowie. From the ‘70s to the current day, Eno has been as prolific a collaborator as he has been an artist, with an oeuvre that includes electronic projects, film and television soundtracks, art-installations, soundscapes, tone poems, and now, What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory. This new book, created in collaboration with the Dutch visual artist and writer Bette A., is an experimental, open, and free questioning of art’s purpose.

‍

Releasing this spring, What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory asks not only what art does, but why do we need it? In over 122 pages, A. and Eno posit the idea that art is essential to both our society and individual lives, existing all around us in the most mundane acts of everyday life—that art is the key to a new and improved world. The pair met when they crossed paths at TRQSE, the collective of artists and scientists collaborating on social projects, co-founded by A. in 2019. In their “new theory of art,” Eno and A. position art as “play for adults.” The book’s structure remains true to this idea, exploring deep questions about art with the simplicity of childlike adventure. Its pages unfold in short digestible paragraphs of no more than a couple of sentences in a large, black typeface, interspersed with lists, bullet points, and questions, along with unrestrained and playful black and pink drawings.

Eno’s first book in 29 years, What Art Does follows the release of this year's documentary, Eno, and a of book portraits, Drawn Without Looking, 2024, created by members of the producer’s art collective, Hard Art. All proceeds from What Art Does will go to Earth Percent, an organization which brings funds from the music industry to green initiatives, and The Heroines! Movement, a female-empowerment non-profit co-founded by A. The two authors are entirely immersed in a total practice of art as a way of existing, unbound by genres or one-dimensional forms. It makes sense that their final chapter should end with the page-long “poem,” in which one stanza reads: “And to realise that what we need is already inside us, and that art––playing and feeling––is a way of discovering it.” 

‍

“What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory” will be released by Faber on January 16 (UK) and March 25 (North America).

‍